


Bloodstain to Bloodstain

by greyvvardenfell, moonmoth (greyvvardenfell)



Series: Fictober 2019 [2]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen, canon-typical blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23569519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyvvardenfell/pseuds/greyvvardenfell, https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyvvardenfell/pseuds/moonmoth
Summary: Julian sees Lucio at his most vulnerable.
Relationships: Julian Devorak & Lucio
Series: Fictober 2019 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696495
Kudos: 7





	Bloodstain to Bloodstain

**Author's Note:**

> For the Fictober prompt: "Now? Now you listen to me?"

Everywhere Julian looked, the Count of Vesuvia looked back. Portrait after portrait, commissioned in better times. Finely wrought armors, swords never forged to see battle, ridiculously elaborate costumes, props he could only assume would be recycled into Vesuvia’s finest theaters, provided a show could be written around them. And through them all, blazes of gold, of white, of red. Surely, Julian thought, surely he would never have used so much red if he’d known? Wasn’t that why he’d banished all these paintings from his quarters in the first place?

As he neared the end of the hallway, the clasp holding Julian's bag of medicines gave way, spilling vials and paper-wrapped packages onto the plush crimson carpet. He glowered at the fallen treatments for a moment before dropping to his knees to herd them up. “I should be thanking you,” he grumbled to a single leech stuck to the inside a round-bottomed bottle. “Our dear count has been particularly, ah, unpleasant as… of…”

The tall golden door at the end of the hall stood open just enough for sound to leak out. Nadia’s marvelous clock, a rival in grandeur to the organ gracing her parlor, had just chimed three in the morning when he emerged from the library and even Asra’s odd hours weren’t odd enough to see him visiting these chambers alone at this time of night. No one but them ever came up here, and the occupant of the bed inside, even now, after months of illness, wasn’t known for making noises like those. Julian crept closer, curiosity piqued, abandoning his bag beside its contents. As he neared the seam of the door, he recognized what he was hearing. But it couldn’t be. Was that…? Is he…?

Count Lucio was crying. Alone in the darkness of his nearly empty room, wasted to skin and bone, thinking himself safe in the middle of the night to show how scared he truly was of the fate he finally seemed to realize was inevitable, Count Lucio was crying.

Julian bit his lip, thinking fast. _I should leave. No, should I go in? Try to comfort him somehow? I guess I ought to give it a go, even though… what can I say? We haven’t made any progress downstairs, despite everything. I don’t have anything else to offer him. But still…_ He tilted his head, trying to catch a glimpse of the Count through the tiny slit in the door. Nothing. _Every dying man deserves someone at their bedside. Even if that dying man is Lucio, and that someone is me._

He drew a steadying breath, decision made, and deliberately knocked his elbow against the wall. Inside the room, Lucio’s soft weeping cut off with an abrupt intake of breath, which gave way to a fit of coughing as his weak lungs struggled to keep up. Julian took the Count’s momentary inability to speak as his cue to enter, pausing just inside to turn up the lamps.

“Hello there, Lucio.”

The flash of red eyes, matched by red cheeks as what remained of Lucio’s blood rushed to his face with each cough, forced Julian back a step, which he turned into a perfunctory check of his patient’s bedding. He wondered if he would ever grow accustomed to that plagued scarlet hue.

Lucio gave one last bone-rattling hack and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. The spittle, Julian noted sadly, was more red than white. “What do you want, Jules?”

 _Good god, he sounds bad._ “Well, I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by.”

“Stop by for what? D’you have a cure yet?”

“I… no, but—”

Before, Lucio might have lobbed something at him, or shrieked his displeasure until it bounced off the walls. Now all he could manage was a sneer. “Then get out.”

Julian shuffled his feet, watching the flush fade back into sickly pallor as Lucio stared hard at the painting dominating the opposite wall. The only portrait of himself he’d allowed to remain in his room was so large, the top of it was hidden in shadow when the lights were low like this. It was one of the few in which the subject’s eyes were averted, gazing proudly off the side of the canvas with his head held high, looking every inch the ruler of a city like Vesuvia. His eyes followed the lines of his own body, over and over and over, as if he could will the pigment into muscle. Even now, as Julian stood above him, Lucio’s pale irises, trapped in their red prisons, began to seek the familiarity of the brushwork.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not leaving. Not yet, anyway.”

It took the Count a moment to realize he’d been countermanded. “What did you say?”

“I, ah.” It was Julian’s turn to blush, the golden tassels hanging from the canopy of Lucio’s bed suddenly fascinating. “I heard you. Just now, before I came in. I… well, I heard you.”

Lucio’s eyes narrowed to slits, his lips pursed somewhere between confrontation and fear. “You heard me,” he said, as neutrally as he could. “Pfft. So? Heard me what?”

Julian made to sit on the edge of the bed, thought better of it halfway down, then chewed his lip all the way across the room and back as he fetched a chair and dropped it at Lucio’s bedside. “You’re not fooling me, you know. I’ve got sharper ears than most people expect.”

“Why would anyone care how sharp your ears are?”

“The point is—” Julian leaned over, his elbows on his knees as though the two of them were sharing secrets like old friends. “I’m here if you want to, I don’t know, talk about anything. A non-judgmental party. All ears.” He gave an open smile.

“Ears again? What is it with you and ears?” Lucio scowled. “I don’t want to talk to you, Jules. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Just leave and let me sleep.”

Julian’s grin fell away. “I… I really don’t think I should. You’re not in a great place right now, and—”

“Just right now?” Lucio’s attempt at a derisive laugh sent him into another spiral of coughs, blood-flecked mucus spattering over his bedspread. The next breath he attempted was more wheeze than inhale. “Where’ve you been the past year?”

“Come on, now, Lucio. Where’s your…” Julian trailed off, eyes darting from bloodstain to bloodstain across the Count’s shirt and sheets and skin. “Where’s your fighting spirit?”

“Ha. Dying with the rest of me, _doctor_.”

Lucio never allowed The D Word to be uttered in his presence, much less cross his own lips. “I’m— I’m sorry.”

With effort, Lucio sat up. “Now? Now you’re sorry? Now you want to sit here and listen to me? After all I did for you, Jules, now you want to waltz in here with your, with your stupid long legs and, and your big shoulders and your full head of hair and you wanna pretend like, like, like, like I’m still gonna be okay? I dug you outta the trash to bring you here! I thought you’d cure me! You studied under Naz-whatever—”

“Nazali,” Julian interjected quietly, his hands slowly curling into fists.

“Nazali, and wha’d’it get you? Nothin’! I thought you’d turn me back into that!” He jabbed a bony finger towards his portrait and coughed into the crook of his elbow. “What’s the point unless I can be that? What’s the point, huh? What’s the point?!”

Lucio’s arm began to shake, both from the effort of holding it aloft and the increasing desperation in his voice. Julian met his eyes and saw the immensity of his pain, his fear and his hatred for himself, for what he’d become. He released his clenched fists.

A sob fought its way out of Lucio’s throat, too big to hold back anymore, and Julian shifted onto the bed. The Count shrank away from him until he opened his arms in wordless invitation, and Lucio threw himself with all the strength he had left against his chest, cradled as he cried for the only time he could remember.


End file.
